lgw wrote:The food question has bothered me ever since The Fading. If you have some clue about wilderness survival, and are stuck in the wilderness long term, starvation is the most likely way to die. I'm sure Cuegan took some provisions when they set out, but you just can't carry that much (and foraging for berries and grapes only helps a little if you don't already know where the food grows). Molpy hunting is often a net calorie loss (rabbits are infamous for this - you can't find and catch a rabbit without spending more calories than you get from one, on average, unless you use snares or dogs or some other trick). It's hard to believe the 40 are carrying more than a few day's food now, and I'm not sure they'd know how to fish.

If you are unexpectedly thrown into a survival situation exposure kills the quickest (a matter of hours), followed by dehydration (a matter of days), followed by starvation (a matter of weeks). We can rule out the threat exposure for this group.

That leaves dehydration as their next threat. They loaded on at least two barrels when they left camp, so that alone would give them at least couple of gallons per person. (Given our 2D perspective they could have loaded on a dozen barrels in two rows, and all we would have seen are the two barrels closest to us.) Plus all of the smaller containers of water they would have carried on. These are desert survivors, so I think water would have been one of their highest priorities.

If they can stay cool, in the shade, resting, they might be able to get their water consumption down to a couple of gallons per person per week. Also, all of this Atlantic water is going to be cool, lowering local temperature quite a bit, so from this point on we shouldn't be thinking of them sweltering in the heat. And if it rains, then they can replenish their water stores.

As far as food goes, I expect the water to be full of all kinds of molpies, swimming or freshly drowned. And many of those Atlantic fish that died from the trauma of becoming Mediterranean fish should start floating to the surface. That should supplement their food supplies nicely.

So in the context of this story I think they can survive on their rafts for at least 2 weeks, maybe a month, before it starts straining believability.

If you're skilled at wilderness survival, and it's above freezing, exposure and water you can deal with. You just need to have learned what to do (though bad water can be a real problem, it's far less of a concern in a true wilderness), and the Cueganites surely have. But food is a much harder problem: it's not just a matter of learning skills. From what we know from the few remaining hunter-gatherers in the 20th century, you pretty much have to have grown up in an area and learned every place likely to have food (and distinguish 200 species of edible plant from others of similar appearance - it's really an amazing skill set). Modern survival courses teach all this in some detail - it's possible to learn enough, but you basically spend all day foraging.

Anyhow, my point was food has been basically handwaved as an issue, in a comic where everything else is obsessed over for accuracy (even mentioning steam bottles for water), so it bothers me.

I didn't think of dead molpies on the surface. I like that. That might work for a while (dead things in the water become a bigger problem after a few days), even though I doubt the 40 can actually fish. I'm going to pretend that's the answer.

And don't forget that crate of food drifting in from the right of the frame...

NetWeasel wrote:The messages are sorted by post time -- possibly in minutes.

Dollars to peanuts say it's seconds, as Unix timestamps are used.Also, your captcha says "74'WS 374'WS". What did I win?

{P1120}Shirley the whole clock is used to time stamp the messages. It would be foolishly pointless to truncate it.(The Shirley thing isn't an affectation, at least not any more; my spell checker does it for me)

They didn't leave anyone on watch, which seems potentially a bad idea. I'd want a couple of people front and back keeping an eye on debris that might foul them and being ready to fend it off with sticks.

BlitzGirl wrote:O-kay. I counted all the chirpin' characters and came up with 38. THAT IS NOT FORTY, GREAT LORD RANDALL.On the other hand, kudos for coming up with 38 identifiably different characters. That's really something.If there are two more hiding in the geraft or the raftcastle (raftsicle, yummy), I hope they come out soon.But as thirty-eight is "about forty" I think this might be it. Over five frames they really moved around.I split up the rafts to maximize space; the raftcastle half of the newpix is on top, the other two rafts appear below.(Click for larger size.)

jeffallen55 wrote:Okay, if I remember properly from my time in Boy Scouts, birds always grow on the north side of a tree, so at least we know which direction they're pointing.

Ah, we had the same quality boy scout training! I also learned that it's important that, even though you're going to burn everything flammable within walking distance anyway, people get mad if you don't bring each thing to the campfire first.

Latent22 wrote:Been some good discussion on here on how we could do Rosetta and beanish so keep that coming!

I forgot I'd been thinking about this - the rest of the family plays something called "Animal Crossing" on the Nintendo 3DSXLQZ+Awesome (or whatever it's called). The animal characters have this sort of garbled speech thing where it's almost understandable.

If the Beanie voiceover could have a similar sort of process, but not as strongly done, it might work. Info here.

Yay, another molpy crossing fan! Though, I suppose your post implies you're not really a fan so much as kin to some...but really, you ought to be, it's a great game CONNECTION LOG: BITS RECEIVED POST-SUBMISSION, RECTIFYING POST CONTENT

Exodies wrote:

NoMouse wrote:

patzer wrote:

NoMouse wrote:

NetWeasel wrote:ETA: Hold on.. I just goatted the PagePope who quoted this message before I posted it????I think I need a ruling here...

You two just broke the space-time continuum... How in the hell could he quote your message that was submitted at the precisely same second?

"Last edited by mathmannix at newpix 2868.26, edited 4 times in total."I assume he edited in the quote later.

Yeah, that has to be it. But why would he post the message in the first place, given that the future-quote and the reply to it is the only thing it contains? It's still a time-travel paradox.

{P1120}Are there more than one front end servers? Are their clocks properly synchronised? Does the pope shit in the woods? Perhaps we just don't know.

Is there such a thing as two events objectively occurring simultaneously? Perhaps from all perspectives things happened in a linear fashion. It is ambiguous without a completely objective frame of reference (the server is not objective - anything could happen to those electrons in the tubes)

And with that, I must - I must - c#c@#c%#$#oma-3$%#a4#@1a$#@#a2#$5^@~!@$$%$#@ ||| WARNING ||| SIGNAL LOST. ATTEMPTING RECONNECT IN 0:20:19 +- 2:36

Arky wrote:The MegaCastleRaft looks kind of like a wagon train, at this distance and without the benefit of colour or shade to delineate between land and sea.

I wonder if they will continue to collect and lash together flotsam until they've created Sea Town. (Or maybe that would be "Pretty New Sea Town"...)

This could be the start of a Waterworld like city. Something akin to .Of course this isn't Waterworld. It holds to the laws of physics as close as GLR can find the details, not as close to the laws of physics as the movie makers felt like. Thus they'll flow to the mainland, France most likely, and go to land there. They'll continue their nomadic existence. Due to the influx of people from the filling Mediterranean sea the people will feel it's far to crowded to live properly, despite the fact that most area's are less densely populated than the least populated areas in current Europe. They have grown accustomed to the lebensraum the Antares incidentcookie? provided. Local warlords feel this restlessness and adjust their punishments to newcomers accordingly. They'll be executed for trespassing. Thus ends Time.

cookie?Unsure whether it actually was Antares' supernova that actually caused the death of most people on Earth. But you know what I mean. It may simply be that the wealthy people left Earth for Mars because the habitats on Mars were the place to be. This leaving would have been done by space elevator. Once they left the space elevator wasn't maintained and the resulting crash caused a dust cloud that kept food production low for half a century. The resulting world war was what killed most of the rest.

Mikeski wrote:A "What If" update is never late. Nor is it early. It is posted precisely when it should be.

Arky wrote:The MegaCastleRaft looks kind of like a wagon train, at this distance and without the benefit of colour or shade to delineate between land and sea.

"You have died of dysentry".

You called?

I believe this is looking north...with the bright star upper center being Vega in the constellation Lyra... Down and right of that appears to be Hercules. The north celestial pole, in theory, should be between Lyra and Hercules.

EDIT: But I need a more favorable Gamma and a glance at the charts to be certain...RE-EDIT: NOPE! Center of the field of view is Perseus. The fuzzy patch of stars to the right is of course the Pleiades. 's what I get for rambling off the cuff without double checking.

BlitzGirl wrote:Hello, bachaddict! It's definitely possible, especially when you take into account What Ifs #53 and #54, Drain the Oceans, which certainly seem RELATED to the events in the OTC. But if anything I would guess that it would be GLR's work on the OTC that would be more likely to engender various spin-off What Ifs, rather than the OTC itself being nothing but a lead-up to a new What If. Of course, I might be biased towards the OTC just a teeny tiny riverish bit.

I feel welcomed!Since I don't ketchup, I won't see it if you xuys talk to me. Exciting Times these are!

slinches wrote:Also, the OTC isn't a disease. In fact, it's the cure. As we all know, Time heals all wounds.

hunjoh wrote:I remember seeing some safety information from the Coast Guard that stated that a in large percentage cases where people fall overboard and drown, the bodies were recovered with their fly unzipped. (The Coast Guard was emphasizing the need to wear life jackets at all times...)

I heard that same statistic regarding people who fall over the edge of the Grand Canyon.

"It's only funny until someone loses an eye, then it's still funny but they can only see it in 2-D."

Tatiana wrote:If you haven't read them yet, the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold is very good.

A bit of book reply about Vorkosigan (off-topic!) - so feel free to skip.

Spoiler:

You know, I made it through the two prequels about Miles' mom/dad, and about 4 Miles books after that but just couldn't make it any further. I also didn't read any of the short stories. It's so damn hard to discover what order you should read the series in, and ultimately - that's what made me stop. I did like the Miles character, tho.

Spoiler:

I thought the first two about the parents were the best of the bunch. They are together in one volume called "Cordelia's Honor". After that, the others are meant to go in any order at all, but I think the next ones to read would be "Young Miles" which has 3 novels combined, then "Miles Errant". Next "Miles, Mystery and Mayhem" and "Miles, Mutants, and Microbes" either one first, which also have 3 novels or novellas each. Then "Miles in Love" next. That contains one of the funniest novels I've ever read, "A Civil Campaign". Then after that it's just snapping up the leftovers that aren't yet combined into an omnibus volume yet. "Memory", "Cryoburn", and the latest which is called "Captain Vorpatril's Alliance" starring not Miles but his cousin Ivan, who is taken more seriously in this one. Up to then he'd mostly been comic relief. This is from memory so I really ought to check it. Miles' stories are kind of fluffy and silly compared to his parents, I think, but the more I read Bujold the more I like her.

Someone else I can't believe I didn't mention before is Octavia Butler. I love her Xenogenesis series which is published together in one book as "Lilith's Brood". It's wonderful and I've read it several times. Next favorite is "Fledgling" which is her take on vampires, and was meant to be the first of a series. Alas, she died before she could write more of them. Next is the Patternist Series which is also in one book now. The first of these, Wild Seed, should win a Nobel Prize or something. It's that good. She's amazing.

Capella (in Auriga) is the very bright star in the lower left. Aldeberan (in Taurus) is in the lower right. Pleiades above and left of Taurus. Mirphak (in Perseus) is above Capella. Algol is to the right of Mirphak. Algol is a famous variable (eclipsing binary in this case) star discovered way back. Looks pretty bright here, so not in an eclipsed phase. We're looking vaguely south, maybe a bit to the east. Hard (at least for me) to pin down a date because there are no planets or Moon visible. If this is April 13291, the Moon passed through Taurus on the 10th. I cannot get the star orientations and the horizon to line up for any date in April or May. I'll leave it to someone with more expertise.

Arky wrote:The MegaCastleRaft looks kind of like a wagon train, at this distance and without the benefit of colour or shade to delineate between land and sea.

I wonder if they will continue to collect and lash together flotsam until they've created Sea Town. (Or maybe that would be "Pretty New Sea Town"...)

I wonder where all the flotsam suddenly came from. The last larger plant was the yucca-like one on frame 2997m. From there until they meet the others, go into the village, see the arrival of the castleraft, nothing, and they're closer to the sea, so judging from the start of their journey, there just is no vegetation there.

Then, when the raft is equipped with the yurts and starts to float away, the water is full of trees and stuff floating along and past them. And some huge trees. They can't possibly have been washed down all the way from Gibraltar. Or can they?

capnbuckle wrote:EDIT: But I need a more favorable Gamma and a glance at the charts to be certain...

Better?

This might be a bit far fetched, but the darker part at the bottom cloud be the continental slope in the distance. There are no stars in that region and normally you'd expect the sky to be lighter closer to the horizon, right?

hunjoh wrote:I remember seeing some safety information from the Coast Guard that stated that a in large percentage cases where people fall overboard and drown, the bodies were recovered with their fly unzipped. (The Coast Guard was emphasizing the need to wear life jackets at all times...)

I heard that same statistic regarding people who fall over the edge of the Grand Canyon.

Kids, this is why you must always wear your life jacket when you visit the Grand Canyon.In other news, down molpyscope!